


Exquisite Corpse: Jinxed

by bewildered



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 21:50:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16437473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bewildered/pseuds/bewildered
Summary: My chapter of a surrealist shared-universe work, I was given the fist paragraph and nothing else to write my story from. Unsurprisingly, it got smutty. Buffy and Spike deal with a jinx. My last paragraph was then passed on to the next author on the list. The whole work may be read here: https://dark-solace.org/elysian/viewstory.php?sid=5494 (registration required)





	Exquisite Corpse: Jinxed

“You, my darling Buffy, my queen of denial, my I’d-rather-go-kill-something-big-and-slimy-instead, you said _…‘do you wanna talk about it,’_ that’s what you said! If it isn’t enough to jinx us…”

Buffy planted her hands on her hips. “Well, if we weren’t jinxed then, we are now.”

“What?” Spike folded his arms and glared back.

“The first rule of jinxes is: you do not talk about jinxes! Any time you say the word jinx you just multiply the jinxiness until–” Buffy caught herself with a gasp. “Oh my god, how many times did I just say it?”

“Jinx?” Spike raised his eyebrows mockingly.

“Stop it!”

“What, you really believe in jinxes? I was just employing a figure of speech.”

“Are you telling me that you, a _vampire_ who has seen ample proof of the existence of demons, magic, ghosts, hell dimensions, and all manner of supernatural phenomena, _don’t_?”

Spike waved his hand dismissively. “I’ll believe in anything but jinxes.”

“Leprechauns?”

“Mean lil’ buggers.”

Buffy sighed. “In any case, we are getting off the subject. _Do_ you want to talk about it?”

“Well, yeah.”

“So. Talk.”

Spike rolled his eyes a few times and shrugged, and looked around, hesitating, and finally said, “Not here. Smells funny.”

“Fine,” Buffy huffed, taking Spike by the hand and dragging him off.

***

They really were jinxed.

First, they tried Buffy’s house, but just as they’d settled onto the back stairs, Dawn had come bouncing out, first inserting herself into their barely-started conversation, then, when Buffy had politely suggested she leave, storming off with a huff and a promise to eavesdrop. Which Buffy knew she totally would, possibly with a tape recorder for future blackmail potential, and she was so not doing that. Not with _this_ conversation.

The Bronze had a nice mellow band playing, and Buffy had been hopeful that they would be able to find a table to chat at, but then Xander had popped up out of nowhere, asking her how she was doing after earlier (how did he think she was doing? Geez!) and then asking her to join the Scoobies where they were playing pool, and it had taken another twenty minutes to extricate themselves from that awkward situation with the excuse of patrol.

It wasn’t until the graveyard that Buffy began to suspect that there was something more going on than just a run of bad luck. They could talk about things that weren’t important, but every time either she or Spike would say word one about what they actually _wanted_ to talk about, they were interrupted by yet another vampire or demon attacking. Which — well, they were in the graveyard, so vampires were kind of a feature, not a bug, but most patrols she didn’t feel like she was playing Whack-a-Mole on an endless loop.

“I think we really _are_ jinxed,” she said at last, huffing with exertion.

“You might be right,” Spike managed, waving away the dust. “It’s like every time we try to talk about–” A snarly green demon tackled him before he could finish his sentence.

When Buffy had finally dispatched that demon, she turned to Spike and clapped a hand over his mouth, glaring at him silently.

He glared right back.

The graveyard remained empty and still.

It was weird, standing in the darkness all splattered with demon goo and vampire dust — which stuck to the goo, of course — with her hand on Spike’s mouth, his eyes barely a foot away from her own. She was panting from exertion, and she was dizzily aware that his chest was rising and falling for some unknown reason, that he was exhaling regularly from his nose, cool air on her scraped knuckles, and the longer they stood there the softer his eyes got, and his lips were even more soft under her hand, and she was swaying into him and —

No! They had to talk first! Which meant they had to remove the jinx first. Which meant….

“Giles.”

Spike’s eyes crinkled in wry amusement.

“We need to go to Giles’s apartment. One of his dusty old books has to have a spell for removing a… a J-I-N-X.”

He grinned as she dropped her hand from his mouth. “Believe that’s spelled with a Y, love.”

“Is it?”

“Used to be.”

“Huh. Well, in any case, we gotta fix this. Whatever you do, don’t say another word about you-know-what.”

His lips curled into… she didn’t know what you would even call that expression, but it made her weak in the knees and tingly to her fingertips. “My lips are sealed,” he purred.

They set off towards the cemetery gate.

***

After a quick (and thankfully Dawn-free) detour by Buffy’s house for her to slip into something less actively disgusting — Spike didn’t seem to have a speck of goop on him, leading Buffy to speculate inwardly about whether vampirism came with a special gore-repelling force field — they made their way to Giles’s apartment, which was thankfully unoccupied. Weirdly so, since Buffy was fairly sure Giles didn’t have a social life to speak of, but she supposed even Watchers needed to make late night Taco Bell runs on occasion, and she had a spare key anyhow. In any case, it saved her the trouble of explaining just why she was doing research with Spike, and also why she and Spike were doing research in a vaguely-cuddly way — not too cuddly, they still had to talk! — not to even mention the fact that with him gone she could raid the cupboards for that really good chocolate he hid behind the Weetabix. Like Buffy wasn’t wise to the nasty-food-camouflage technique.

Finding the right book, though, was another matter entirely.

“Why does he even _have_ this book?” Buffy groused, plopping her fifth dusty useless book down on the ever-growing stack. “Like I’m going to waste my time thinking about twelve-step strategies when I’m kicking ass.”

“Better than this one,” Spike grumbled. “At least that one was in English. Took five minutes of translation to suss out it was all sodding recipes for medieval headache cures. For demons.”

“Isn’t there a _Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ji… J-I-N-Xes_ somewhere around here?” She planted her hands on her hips, glaring at the offending bookshelves.

“Obviously not,” Spike pointed out. “You’d be able to spot that by the trademark orange cover.”

Buffy blew her hair out of her eyes, annoyed. “Well, there has to be something. If we don’t find a solution before Giles gets back, he’ll–”

Buffy froze at the sound of keys jingling just outside the doorway.

“I did it, didn’t I?” she moaned. “I said the words, and the J-I-N-X summoned him.”

“You bloody well did,” Spike sighed, rising to his feet. “Guess we’ll have to face the music…”

“No!” Buffy hissed, grabbing Spike’s hand and dragging him towards the closet. “There will be no music and no facing. I do _not_ want to explain any of this. He’s got to go to bed soon, he’s old. We’ll just hide until then, borrow a few more of the books, and sneak out. _Comprende_?”

Buffy stuffed Spike into the closet and stepped in after him, hearing the apartment door swing open just as the closet door snicked shut.

***

Giles frowned at the books on the table. Had he left the light on?

“Buffy?” he called, just in case.

When there was no reply, he shrugged. It wasn’t the first time he’d left work out on his table and forgotten all about it. That was the thing about being an intelligent man, sometimes one didn’t have room left among all the important thoughts for things like housework and eating and remembering what he’d been doing an hour before. That was what maids and food delivery services and journals were for.

With a sigh, he pulled his fresh bottle of Scotch out of the convenience-store paper bag, setting the receipt aside so he could remember to bill his Watcher’s Council expense account. When in training, he’d scoffed at the idea that the Watcher of an active slayer should have a liquor allowance, but since taking charge of Buffy, he had not only come to understand, but had drafted a well-worded petition for the Council to increase said allowance.

He’d recommended tripling it.

Sighing again — this time in relief — he put a record on the turntable and settled in to his recliner with his glass of soothing booze, extracting his latest novel from its hiding place under the phone book. It was rare that he had time to relax with good literature and good Scotch, though of course he refrained from voicing that thought out loud.

It would be foolish to jinx himself.

***

_Wow,_ Buffy thought. _Giles sure owns a lot of jackets._

Whenever people hid in closets in movies, there was always plenty of space for them to squeeze in among the loose clothes on the rack, possibly even to set out a picnic blanket and have a cheerful lunch, but Giles’s closet was packed solid, as if he’d cleaned out the bargain bin at Tweed ‘R’ Us. There were heavy plastic bins on the floor that clinked when she nudged them aside, like they were full of knives or chains, and there was barely enough room for her and Spike to stand, squished between the hanging suit jackets like a couple of sardines. She wedged Spike towards the back and set her back to him, trying to calm her panicked breathing.

After his initial tentative greeting — she’d held her breath until his footsteps moved away — Giles seemed to have settled down for whatever old English guys did in the evening, playing some sort of disco music instead of going to bed like he was supposed to. What was up with that?

In the meantime, she was stuck here in the closet with Spike. Enough dim light filtered around the edges of the door that she could see faintly. She had managed to clear a few feet of floor space for her and Spike to stand in, and the jackets pressed in around them like scratchy pillows, and then Spike’s lips were brushing her ear and her eyes drooped shut at the sensation.

“How long do you think he’ll be awake?” Spike murmured.

“I don’t know, I–” Buffy began.

“Buffy?” Giles’s voice sounded from the other side of the door. Buffy’s eyes popped open; she shut her mouth and held her breath.

There was a long, expectant pause from the living room, and then a rustle as Giles apparently settled back into wherever he was sitting.

“Must be my imagination,” she heard him mutter.

Spike’s hands slid between the jackets and her shoulders, pulling her back against his chest. “What a fine pickle this is,” he crooned softly. “Here I can whisper in your ear, and you can’t say a thing, lest the watcher hear you.”

Buffy rolled her eyes, even though she knew he couldn’t see them. _Way to state the obvious!_

“I guess that means we can’t have a conversation,” Spike continued. “Whatever shall we do to pass the time?”

If Buffy had been able to say anything, she would have retaliated with some sort of snappy quip that would cut him down to size, but of course she couldn’t, and so she kept her mouth shut. Just being in the closet already felt half like a dream, and she was suddenly very aware of the fact that she could feel Spike pressed all up against her back, hard chest and hard thighs and hard arms, and she couldn’t help but tilt her hips back the tiniest amount, just to check, and oh yes, that was hard too, and suddenly she was hotter than even their oppressive tweed enclosure could account for.

She managed to shrug with what she hoped was convincing nonchalance.

“No ideas?” he whispered, hands starting to slide down her arms to her elbows, and then her wrists. He pulsed his hips against her and, god help her, she pulsed back even as she shrugged again, the feel of his hard cock against her making her dizzy, even with his jeans and her skirt between them.

His fingers curled briefly around her wrists before releasing them and tucking in to settle on her hips, lightly, and he curled down to rest his chin on her shoulder, his cheek barely brushing her jaw, and Buffy let her head fall back, feeling her pulse speed up even as she fought to keep her breath quiet, eyes fluttering closed again as she pressed into his delicious hardness again and again.

After a long, delicious interlude of nothing but the sound of fabric rasping together and her faint gasps, he raised his lips back up to her ear, tenderly catching her earlobe between his teeth, and Buffy decided that pretending she wasn’t thinking exactly what he was thinking was no fun anymore, and so she wriggled her hands around in the tight space so that she could take his hands, and dragged them up to her breasts. She opened her eyes to watch.

“God,” he muttered in her ear, voice husky, and he cupped her gently for a moment, the cool pressure of his hands somehow comforting, her hands tenderly stroking his knuckles, but then his teeth caught her earlobe again, harder, his tongue flicking out to gently trace the curve of her ear, and his fingers caught at her hard nipples, plucking them through the thin fabric, and she bit her lip to keep from moaning.

“Better not make a sound,” Spike murmured raggedly as he stroked her, and she managed a nod, and then reached down to tug up the hem of her shirt, Spike assisting, until his cool hands were on her bare skin.

Spike swore into her ear again, tugging her shirt up tight into her armpits, and they both watched his fingers on her breasts silently, his skin gleaming pale in the near darkness, hers just a shade darker, her fingers tracing the veins and tendons of his busy hands. Somehow the dimness of the light made it surreal enough that Buffy didn’t even feel shy, watching intently as her nipples ruched tighter and tighter until the friction of his skin against them was almost painful, painful and delicious, and then he slipped his hands out from under hers and pressed her own palms to her breasts, so she could feel just how hard they were.

“Now you,” he whispered harshly, and she sank against him and took charge, feeling his eyes on her every move. She made a show of it, cupping her hands under her breasts to lift them to his gaze, curling her fingers in and letting her nipples pop out between them, tugging and plucking and stroking and constantly aware of his hard cock gliding insistently against her, and his lips pressing kisses to her cheek and ear and throat, and most of all his hands, sliding down her sides and bunching in the fabric of her short skirt, furling it up in his hands until her thighs were bare and he slid both hands in to her center, stroking her roughly through her panties.

“God, you’re wet.”

She nodded, swallowing convulsively.

“You wore this skirt for me, didn’t you? You planned this. You wanted this.” His low voice was desperate.

The dim dream world of the closet made lying seem ridiculous; she nodded again, clutching at her own breasts as he explored, rubbing the cotton of her panties roughly against her.

“You want me,” he rumbled faintly, almost disbelieving.

Another nod, and he sighed gustily, hooking his thumbs in the elastic of her panties and shoving them down a few inches to stretch around the tops of her thighs, and then his hands were on her again, no fabric in the way now, stroking firmly through her wetness, matching rhythm with the motions of his cock; she fell into the rhythm, tilting her hips into his strokes, scooting her feet out to the sides until they came up against the barrier of the heavy bins

“I could make you scream,” he growled, harsh and urgent. “Make you howl with pleasure.”

Buffy tilted her head so she could meet his eyes challengingly; his were dark in the shadows, and somehow soft, soft and open. And she smiled. _I’d like to see you try._

As if he’d heard her, his eyes narrowed, and he grinned, teeth strangely bright, and then his lips were at her ear again.

“Hold on to the doorframe,” he murmured.

She swallowed and leaned forward to take hold of the sturdy wooden frame, face close enough to the door that even in the faint light she could see the pattern of the wood grain, and she felt Spike moving behind her, his hands tugging her panties further down, and then she felt pressure on the insides of her ankles, and she looked down to see Spike’s knees sticking out between her feet, and before she could even wonder what he was doing kneeling, his hands were on her ass and he was spreading her wide and then his tongue was on her, and oh. Oh. She arched her back to give him a better angle and clenched her jaw because he was right, she was a bare inch from howling, but she’d be damned if she was going to get discovered now.

She needed more.

She couldn’t see anything he was doing, not without risking bumping her head into the door — Giles would be sure to notice that — but god, she could feel everything, as if with her vision limited to dim wood and her ears hearing nothing but Giles’s lame music and her nose smelling nothing but a faint hint of cigarette smoke and only the taste of her own saliva on her tongue all those senses had narrowed down to focus instead on the tender strokes of his tongue, the way he flicked and stroked his tongue, the wet glide of his fingers inside her, and then he muttered something into her, too quiet for her to hear, but just imagining what he might have said sent her over the edge and she came hard, barely managing not to make a sound as jolts traveled down her trembling legs, and he chuckled and kissed her inner thigh and sucked hard on her clit before she’d even come down all the way and it sent her rocketing back up, sharp and fierce like a blade, and that was it, that was _it_ , she butted her hips back against him and twisted around in the compressed space and took his shirt in her fist, hauling him to his feet, and she kissed him.

Even in her passion she knew that the door itself was the worst possible surface to do anything against, and there wasn’t any room on the floor, and she sure as hell wasn’t waiting until they found a bed, so as she kissed Spike she turned him and turned him within their tweed cocoon, inch by inch, until her back was against the back wall of the closet, and then she looked up at him, at his hair tousled into a faint halo around his head, and he looked down at her, eyes wide, and she wriggled one ankle out of her dangling underwear and hiked it up under his duster and around his hips as she fumbled at his belt buckle.

He hooked one hand under her knee, and as she worked he stroked her with his other hand, kissing the top of her head, eyes intent on her frantic fingers, and when she’d undone the belt and the button and the zipper and finally had his hard cock in her hands, he growled wordlessly, hooking his big hands under her thighs and sliding her up the wall and she guided him home, hooking her ankles around his waist as he thrust deep.

They stayed that way for a long moment, his cock snug inside her and her legs snug around him and his hands clutching her thighs and her arms draped over his shoulders, and she looked at him serenely and curved a hand around his cheek and leaned in until her lips were right against his ear.

“Shhh,” she whispered, and his chest quaked with silent laughter as he set her back more firmly against the wall and began to move in her, long, leisurely strokes that made her legs quiver.

Buffy felt drunk with the sudden access to his ear, the ability to speak, and it was as if her voice, freed from prison, couldn’t be silent; she whispered and whispered, first shy little whispers of _god_ and _yes_ , then harsher mutters of _more_ and _there_ and _don’t stop_ , punctuated by tender nibbles and strokes of her tongue, and then as the cramped closet seemed to melt into nothing but a surreal dream of pleasure she grew reckless and daring, and _fuck me_ , she murmured, feeling the truth of the demand in her voice. _Fuck me, Spike._ And all the while he nuzzled into her hair and offered his ear up for her demands and thrust into her, maddeningly tender and yet uncompromising, driving deeper and deeper until it felt like he was making love to her very soul.

At last she shattered around him, biting the lapel of his duster to keep from screaming, and he murmured something against her throat as she gasped her completion into his ear, lifting her away from the wall and pumping harder, harder, until he quaked within her, throwing his head back in ecstasy, and she watched his face shift and soften as he shuddered, and then his eyes opened to meet hers, somehow surprised, and she cupped one hand around his face again and kissed him, sweetly, and he kissed her back as if she were his entire universe. Which was kind of how she felt. Like nothing existed but this tiny space, a chrysalis in which something beautiful and brilliant was growing.

When Buffy’s breathing had returned to normal, she wriggled out of their clinch and Spike set her feet on the ground. She tugged him down so she could reach his ear.

“We’re messy,” she whispered.

“Can take care of that,” he whispered back, tongue curling suggestively around the edge of her ear.

Buffy was tempted, but she shook her head. “We both know if you do that we’re just going to get messy all over again.” When he started to move his lips to her ear again, she tugged him back before he could say anything. “Not saying that wouldn’t be kinda nice, but maybe not in the closet next time?”

He nodded in wry acknowledgment, then dug his hand into the pocket of the nearest tweed jacket, tugging out a handkerchief. Buffy sent up a vague mental apology to Giles — though it was weird that she felt guiltier about the handkerchief than about the closet-sex — and managed somehow to reassemble herself without thumping into anything, while Spike gave his softened cock a brisk, thorough swipe and tucked himself away.

And then they waited.

When the music finally ended, Buffy heaved a silent sigh of relief, listening to Giles move about in the living room. Surely he was going to bed now! Not that she minded the lazy kisses and snuggles, but she was getting kind of tired of the tweed. It itched.

There was a faint thumping, a light scratching, and then more music started up.

Oh, for Pete’s sake. Enough was enough. Buffy stepped forward and opened the closet door.

“Hi, Giles!” she said cheerily as she stepped forth from the closet, blinking when he spewed whiskey all over his book.

“Buffy!” he sputtered, wiping alcohol from his chin. “What are you… When did you… What on earth are you doing in my closet?”

“Research,” Buffy said.

Giles’s eyes narrowed. “And what is _Spike_ doing in my closet?” Buffy felt Spike moving behind her, edging towards the door with exactly the sort of subtlety he was known for, which is to say none at all.

“Also research. Very important research.”

Giles closed his eyes briefly, a look of ineffable weariness passing across his face as he spoke again. “May I ask what you were researching?”

“Ji… J-I-N-X-es.” She glanced over at Spike; he raised a smug eyebrow. “Or J-Y-N-X-es.”

“Ah, yes, very good,” Giles said quickly, face relieved, as if her words were a rope thrown to a drowning man. “I know just where to find that…. Here!” He strode over and plucked a weighty tome off his bookshelf, setting it on his desk with a thud. He leafed through the pages. “J… J… To remove a… Oh my, that’s very interesting.”

“Is it?” Buffy said, barely resisting the urge to tell him to get on with it because she and Spike had much more research to do.

“Yes, it says here…. One moment, let me verify the imperative case…. Ah. It says here that one of you must buy the other a Coke.”

Buffy narrowed her eyes, glaring at the pages of the book, which seemed at least two centuries old. “It actually says _Coke_?”

Giles closed the book. “Indeed it does. Perhaps you and Spike should go awa… go and handle that. I suggest the Circle K.”

He met Buffy’s suspicious glare with a bland, faint smile.

***

“Do you think he knows?”

Spike shrugged as they walked down the street. “Maybe. Not that it matters.”

“What if he was listening?” Buffy groused.

“Then I suspect he didn’t have nearly as good a time as we did,” Spike pointed out. “Also, the fact that he was right outside the door made you hotter. You, my dear Slayer, have a discovery kink.”

“I do not!” Buffy lied, blushing.

Spike gave her a sidelong glance but didn’t argue.

They made it to the Circle K in silence — though Spike did tug her behind a tree about halfway for a good smoochfest — and he grouchily pulled a tattered twenty out of one of his many pockets, paying for one Coke and a few mini bottles of Jack Daniels. He handed the Coke bottle to Buffy, who solemnly opened it, tapped it against Spike’s snack-size booze, and took a ceremonial sip.

They waited a few moments, sitting on the curb by the water machine, listening to its low hum in companionable silence as they drank.

Finally, Buffy sighed. “Think it worked?”

“Well, we’ll know if we start our conversation and the Circle K gets robbed.”

“True.” Buffy took another sip of her Coke. “So, what were we going to talk about, again?”

Spike looked at her steadily for a long moment, then laughed. “Bugger if I remember.”

They sipped their drinks for a little while longer.

“Wanna go kill something?” Buffy said at last.

“Yeah, all right.”

***

Unfortunately, their Jinxapalooza earlier in the evening had apparently cleared out just about everything there was to be killed for the night. They strolled through the peaceful darkness for a while, Buffy kind of wishing they were still jinxed. At least then they’d had something to do other than wander the cemetery with a growing awareness that she really needed to change into a fresh pair of panties. But when she pointed this out to Spike, he offered to take the underwear off her hands, or more to the point off her “luscious quim,” but they had cost seven dollars at Victoria’s Secret. Seven dollars! They were chafing a bit, though, so they came to a mutually agreeable compromise in which he got to remove said panties, with the intent being for Buffy to keep them, but then he did that thing, and then that other thing, and by the time they were done with all the things the panties had disappeared and Buffy had ceased to care what had happened to them, so… problem solved? Maybe those panties had only been four-fifty. In any case, she spent the second half of their patrol pantyless, which — as it turned out — was really quite convenient, and also — as it turned out — drove Spike “completely mental.”

Buffy wasn’t sure what “mental” actually meant in England-type English, but the end result was that their fruitless-for-killing patrol turned into a fruitful-for-Buffy-getting-off tour of the more private corners of the cemetery, culminating in a rambunctious tryst atop the Alpert crypt.

She couldn’t say for certain, as she’d been rather in the moment, but she was pretty sure she’d howled.

Afterwards, they lay side by side on the crypt roof, staring up at the stars, hands bonelessly clasped.

“Something weird is going on,” Buffy said suddenly.

“What, with the stars?” Spike said, voice dripping with satiation.

“No, I mean something else weird. Like, what was with that thing earlier?”

“What thing?”

“That thing! You know, the one where you…”

“Oh, _that_ thing? What of it?”

“Don’t you think it’s weird?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.” He rolled to his side, eyes drifting down her naked body. “Rather think about that _other_ other thing. You know, the bit where you…”

Buffy sat up, searching for her shirt. “Come on, Spike. We need to figure out what is going on.” Her skirt had somehow gathered a collection of dried leaves; she shook it out.

Spike sighed and started to reassemble his clothing. “Can we, for the moment, simply agree that that thing you did should definitely be repeated sometime in the near future?”

Buffy flushed. That had been a good thing. “Okay. But later. After we figure out the other thing.”

“Whatever you say, Slayer.”

When they were finally decent to appear in company again — assuming there wasn’t a sudden breeze — they leapt down from the crypt and headed back to Giles’s apartment — by way of Buffy’s house yet again, because it really was a breezy night. No need to flash everyone on the street.

When they finally reached her watcher’s home, Buffy didn’t stand on ceremony, barging right in the door. “Giles! Something’s going on!” Spike entered behind her, slightly less barge-ily.

Giles pointedly took a moment to tuck a bookmark in his whiskey-stained book before standing. “You mean something other than you shagging vampires in my cupboard?”

Buffy rolled her eyes. “Come on, Giles, this is important! And it was only one vampire. Geez.”

He sighed wearily — this was why he should have gone to bed earlier! Old people had to know their limitations! — and poured another half-inch of Scotch into his empty glass. “All right, Buffy. Do tell me what the trouble is.”

Buffy haltingly told the whole story — well, almost the whole story, the important, non-embarrassing bits — and when she finished, Giles eased back in his chair and looked at his now-empty glass meditatively.

“What do you think?” Buffy said hesitantly, as the silence stretched on.

“What I think,” Giles said gently, “is that I am either too sober or too drunk to deal with this this evening. Why don’t you go get a good night’s sleep–” — he glared pointedly at Spike — “–and we can discuss this sometime tomorrow. Preferably no earlier than one in the afternoon.”

Buffy could feel her lower lip sinking into a pout. “I’m not sleepy.”

“Well, I am,” Giles said firmly.

And with that, the conversation ended.

***

“Can you believe him?” Buffy fumed, stomping down the street towards her house.

“Unbelievable,” Spike agreed.

“When weird stuff is going on, he’s supposed to be Mister On-the-Job!”

“Too right.”

Buffy turned and glared at Spike. “Are you just agreeing with me to get me to sleep with you again?”

“Well, yeah. Is it working?”

She jutted her chin out mutinously. “Maybe.”

He grinned.

She glared.

Not too much later, she howled.

***

“So, are you still an unbeliever?” she asked lazily, rolling over and tucking his pink satin comforter more securely around her shoulders. (Nice of him to have bedding that complemented her coloring.)

“In Ji… the J-word?” Buffy nodded. “No, I’ve converted.”

“Good,” she sighed. “I hear religious differences are one of the leading causes of divorce.”

“Can’t marry a dead man to begin with,” Spike pointed out.

“Well, that’s good too,” Buffy smiled hazily. “That saves a lot of legal fees.”

***

Much, much later, when they had actually gotten some sleep, Buffy and Spike let themselves in to Giles’s apartment — or rather, Buffy let herself in, then held the door open for Spike to barrel through under a blanket, smoking from the sunlight — and paused in the foyer, feeling the regard of a lot more eyes than they had been expecting.

“Wow,” Buffy said at last, coughing a little from the smoke from Spike’s blanket. “What is this, an intervention?”


End file.
